| ~ A WEEKLY CALENDAR OF EVENTS What's Up! “TERRACE Wednesday, June 3 TERRACE LITTLE THEATRE holds its monthly general meeting at 8:00 p.m. in the McColl Playhouse, 3625 Kalum St. ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE update — featuring Vancouver Dr. Sheila Nolan takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. al the Happy Gang Centre. For more in- formation call 635-4441 or 635-9090. Friday, June 10 NORTHWEST DEVELOPMENT Education Association hosts a gender relations workshop with Sydia Nduna from Lusaka, Zambia at the Terrace Women’s Resource Centre on Park Ave. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 638-0228 or 635-6233 for more details or to register. TERRACEVIEW LODGE residents and staff host a Seniors Week tea in their honour from 2 to 4p.m. Everybody welcome. Contact: 638-0223. Saturday, June 11 KERMODE FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY holds its annual general meeting at noon at the Kermode Friendship Centre. Buffet and Kitselas dancers to follow. WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT holds a fund- raising garage sale at 4730 Olson. Proceeds to support projects in developing countries. Dona- tion dropoff Friday from 7 to 8 p.m., short meet- ing Saturday at 10a.m. Monday, June 13 CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE hokdis its annual general meeting at 7:30 p.m. You must have purchased or renewed your membership by May 13 to be eligible to vote. SPECIAL OLYMPICS holds its annual general meeling at 7 p.m. at the Community Services board room -- downstairs at city hall (enter at "back door). Call Karla at 635-4958 for more info. Tuesday, June 14 PACIFIC NORTHWEST MUSIC FESTIVAL holds its monthly meeting at 4514 Cedar. Cres- cent, New members welcome and urged to attend. Phone 635-3429, KERMODE FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY provides homework tutoring assistance from 3:30 to 5: 3330 -| p.m. upstairs at 3313 Kalum St. Wednesday, June 15 TERRACE DISTRICT ARTS COUNCIL holds its annual general meeting at 7:30 p.m, at 5307 Mountain Vista. New members welcome. Friday, June 17 ANTI-POVERTY GROUP Sponsors a talk about social assistance, UIC, and _ Jandlord/tenant issues from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Car- penters Hall at 3312 Sparks. For more info call 635-4631. Saturday, June 18 TERRACE TRAVEL INFOCENTRE hosts its -. 8th annual Howdoyoudo Day open house from 10 a.m. 1. 10.6 p.m. _ B.C. SENIOR GAMES ZONE 10 holds a gener- al meeting at 2 p.m, at the Happy Gang Centre. Tuesday, June 21 B.C. SCHIZOPHRENIC: SOCIETY support _ group meets at 3302 Sparks (Stepping Stone Clubhouse) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 22 PROMISEKEEPERS men’s Christian outreach. .. group mecis at Si, Matthew's Anglican Church, from 8 to 10 p.m. THURSDAYS TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meets every Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Skeena Health Unit ~ auditorium, Weigh-in at 6 p.m. THE TERRACE BRIDGE CLUB meets the ". second and fourth Thursday of every month. They get started Oct. 14 at the Legion. C3all Pat at 635- ; 2537 or Ethel at 635-5046 for more info. OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS meet every Thursday al 7:30 p.m. \ at the Women's Resource Centre, ‘TERRACE HIV INFORMATION SUPPORT Group (T.HLES.) meets the third Thursday of every month at 7:30 p.m. in the Mills Memorial Hospital board room, Contact Carrie at 635-4885, The Terrace Standard offers the What’s Up : community calendar .as a public service to its readers and community organizations. - This column is imended for non-profit organiza- tions and those events for which there is no ad- mission charge. items will run two weeks before each event, We ask that items be submitted by 5 p.m, on the Thursday before the issue in which it is to'appear. _ Subinisstons should be typed or printed neatly, 50TH ANNIVERSARY - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, June 8, 199+ - Bq INSIDE SECTION B CITY | JEFF NAGEL SCENE B2 638-7283 Veterans return to beaches By JEFF NAGEL ANDY SANDHALS walked the soil of Normandy again last weekend. Like the thousands of Canadian velerans who fought in Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings bring back powerful memories for the 71-year-old Lakelse Lake resideal, *T wanted to go back and see if I can find my buddies,”’ he said before leaving for France, ‘* And I wanted to walk around where I had lo crawl around before.’’ The 21-year-old kid from Port Essington first landed there on June 17, 1944 — D-plus-11 — and fought his way across the Normandy peninsula as a private with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. The thunder of the artillery fire is what he remembers most. You couldn’t hear,”’ he says. **Tt was just a rear.’’ He made it as far as the French town of Tillie —- where German forces mounted fierce resistance to the allied drive on the city of Caen. It was there thatit happened. Sandhals’ platoon was advanc- ing on an orchard just outside Til- lie under allied artillery on July 25 when a shell fell short. “When I came to, there were lols of dead around me but no one else.”’ ' Thinking any survivors of the platoon had continued to ad- vance, Sandhals pressed forward. ““T headed for the only voices I could hear, But they turned out to be the wrong ones — they were German.”’ The ‘ensuing grenade fight ended only when Sandhals lay wounded with shrapnel in his leg and a German standing over him, pricking him with a bayonct. “T don’t know of any survivors from the platoon,” Sandhals says, “*T was captured all by myself.” “It was a real schmozzle that night,’’ he says. ““We were sup- posed to have a squadron of tanks support us,”” As a prisoner of war, the greatest danger Sandhals faced was (he relentless allied bombing. He was taken to a work camp in ihe city of Leipzig where he worked with other prisoners cleaning up bombed buildings, Af one point, the camp was borabed while he was working in the city, then when he got back ta camp the work site was bombed, “I count myself pretty lucky,’? he says. In May, 1945, the guards marched Sandhals and other prisoners eastward towards the Russian front as the allies ad- vanced on Leipzig, “Eventually, when we could hear artillery fire on both sides, Survivor relives sinking _ By DANA HUBLER LTHOUGH HE was miles away from Normandy on June 6, 1944, Terrace: veteran Bill Gidley was there last weekend to show his respect. Gidley attended the 50th an- niversary of D-Day in Normandy, a ceremony restricted. to 45,000 velerans, press members and offi- cials. “I's going to be the biggest tourist bonanza. Normandy will have ever had,”” Gidley said as he finalized hls plans for the trip. “It’s commemorating the biggest military operation ever conducted in the history of the world.” His trip began in New York May 26, where. he salled on the Queen. Elizabeth 2.. first to Southampton with other veterans and celebrilies like Bob Hope. At -the end of.-his trip, he splurged, said Gidley, and will fly from London back to New. York on ihe Concorde. _ . While he was serving as a telegraphs on a tender at a marine training centre. in Teignmouth. during .the .D-Day.. operation, Gidley carries his own story of battle and survival, SANDY SANDHALS looks back at a photo of the 21-year-old Private Sandhals who fought — and was captured — in Normandy fallawing the D-Day landings 50 years ago. 50 YEARS LATER. Highlanders, only 15 lived to tell about il. they called a halt,’ Sandhals recalls. Sandhais and another prisoner. escaped then — a few weeks be- fore the end of the war — and managed to find a cigar-puffing American colonel ina jeep. Originally trained at Wetas- kawin as a private with the Cal- gary Highlanders, Sandhals was one of numerous replacements ‘brought: in to bolster the North Nova Scolia regiment, which lost tremendous tumbers on Juno Beach on D-Day. Y THE TIME Sandy Sandhals was land- ing in Normandy, Terrace veteran Bill Bennett had Already fought and survived one invasion. Bennett was among the Cana- dian troops who landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943. He and the other Canadians in the first division’s Seaforth Highlanders met a hail of bullets as they hit the rough waters. “Some lasted six seconds, some lasted six minutes, some lasted six days. Others lasted six weeks like me. Not many lasted all the way through.” *“Some lasted six seconds, some lasted six minutes, some lasted six days,” he says. “Others lasted six weeks like me. Not many lasted all the way through.’’ “There was always the pos- sibility of getting wounded. But you expecied lo survive.’’ Out of the original 500 men of the North Nova Scotia As a 17-year-old telegraphist aboard the HMS Barham, a Royal Navy battleship in the Mediter- ranean headed to bombard the North African coast, he had jusi come off duty when the ship was atlacked by a German U-boat, “T was making jam and bread and tea two decks down on the mess deck,’ recounts Gidley. ‘When the first torpedo hit, the ship immedialely keeled over to port, and then came two more hits,”’ He was caught at the back of the crowd trying to get up a lad- der io survival boats on the main deck and knew he had no chance. After checking the mess deck for another exit, he found an empty ladder and climbed to the main deck. ; “'T was still aboard when the ship. blew. up ~ it was an enormous explosion and a: big burst of fire,” Gidley recalls of the 1941 sinking. “I was taken into the water by a huge wave that kept pulling me down, sure I was going to dle and I thought about my mother.” “He owes his survival to: the. warm. Mediterranean waters and the Hotspur, a destroyer: in: the “We lost three men right off the bat, before we hit the beach,’” Bennett says. They were in the first wave of Canadian troops to land. *“When we hil the beach the bullets were coming up,’” Bennett says. ‘‘We lost a lot of men. I was lucky. Very lucky, The second day they lost anoth- er seven in the fighting. By the third day, however, Ben- — nett fell ill with malaria and was sent to hospital in Africa. , He recovered and returned to baitic for Mi. Etna. “The conditions were worse than the fighting,’ Bennett recalls. He remembers digging. a slit trench with another soldier as a ~ bombardment was beginning: _ “We were digging in, butit was taining like hell,’’ he said. - The trench was full to the top — with water and muck, and. the other soldier balked at using it. “He sald ‘I can’t get in that’ "and laid across the trench. Well a bloody sheli came and killed him - tight then and there.”’ Bennett wasn’t impressed with the Canadian government’s treat- ment of its soldiers — right from the day he was shipped out. **They crammed us in there like catile, for God sake,’’ he said. ‘Dogs were treated better than we were,” American and other allied troops were better organized than ihe Canadians, he said. The Canadian soldiers were given only a biscult and a handful of candy when they left the mother ship. “We didn’t get anything cise until we reached the Italian or- — chards,’’ he said. a Medical treatment and care for wounded Canadians didn’t seem as prompt as it was with the Americans, he added, . He lays the blame for such fails ures at the feet of then prime min- ister Mackenzie King, \Ni A U-BOAT TORPEDO should have killed Terrace veteran Bill Gidley along with the other 900 dead of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Barham. But he survived and returned last. — weekend to walk the shores of Normandy during the Sth ar: niverary celebratians of the allied landings. . : fleel that pulled him to rescue, All the on-duty. telegraphists died in the sinking, along with al- most 900 other crew members. To remember those lost, the survivors and the families of the crew who dled get fogelher twlee : a year, . , ~The. group: gathers: for a- -alanad . in. Portsmouth each h May | and lays ‘youngest daughter and her family oo - in Terrace, » ‘ . mee November. After serving 15 years in the -”.. Brilish navy, Gidley Joined’ the Canadian navy and served for a an- ‘other 15 years. | He -tetired from the: navy. 10 work for Statistics Canada in Vancouver. He is now. fully. retired and: fives with - (his